On New Year's Eve, I glanced over an email from Bill Hybels, the Senior Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, in which he encouraged everyone to take time to count their blessings. He told the story of his own family, of their New Year's Eve tradition (if I'm getting this right) of sharing ten great …
Beginnings
The air is different, surprisingly so. Untethered, I wait for instructions. Czeslaw Milosz meets me each morning in his collected poems, instructing me on what it means to see. The psalmist tells me that plans come to nothing on the day we die, and that those who trust in the Lord are blessed. George MacDonald's …
The American Clock
I've got to get out more. Last night, I trekked downtown to small venue I'd never been to before, one of the performing spaces for Cornish School of the Arts (it may be the only one...I don't know). I went to see the opening of The American Clock, by Arthur Miller, directed by Carol Roscoe. …
The World of Experience
So my coffee-shop pediatrician friend pulls up a chair and begins to tell me again of Oliver Sack's new brain book called Migraine. Turns out it's not a new book, but still. Then she refers me back to an old book on my shelf called Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert. Neurons in the gut …
On Contentment
We churn. Yesterday, fueled by a morning conversation about commitment (or lack thereof), challenged by an evening swimming with foolish old thoughts of might-have-beens, I churned. Possible pasts rose up and whacked me in that misty, far-too guilty place, the old smirking internal attorney offering lots of proof of dumb faithlessness and that sorry bug-a-boo …
JEFF BERRYMAN 